Saturday, 22 December 2012

Official trailer for the Bronies documentary is out

Lauren Faust: "We need to ... not call [men] weak for caring."

And here it is! This comes courtesy of Scrnland, the company responsible for the digital distribution of the documentary. (Whose full title, as I'm sure you all know already, is Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony. Not perhaps the snappiest name in existence, but I guess it does the job.) Brian Gyss of Scrnland posted the link to the video here on UK of Equestria a little earlier on, so this trailer is all official and above board. This video has been eagerly awaited by many in the fandom, so is it going to live up to expectation?

Well, there's only so much of a 90-minute film that you can fit into a four-minute trailer, but on the evidence of that trailer it's looking pretty promising. We get several show personalities interviewed, naturally including Tara Strong, and both Lauren Faust and John de Lancie appear as their OCs as well as in human form. (That's right, folks: there's original animation too!) The fans interviewed are a little on the overwhelmingly enthusiastic side, though they're balanced by one poor guy from the mountains of Appalachia who was confronted by rednecks with baseball bats...

We're told that the full documentary will also feature a certain amount of original music — though we don't know who will write it — but the trailer simply uses two fan-made songs, both by very well-known artists. One is "A Long Way From Equestria", a collaboration between Acoustic Brony and MandoPony. The other is the pony song with the highest number of views on YouTube — 4.6 million and counting — The Living Tombstone's legendary remix of Eurobeat Brony's "Discord". Come on, do I really need to give you a link for that one? Oh all right, if you insist.

Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony will be released on 12 January, and a download in DRM-free (yay) MP4 format will cost US$12.99. That equates to £8 or so at current exchange rates. You get your choice of resolutions: since they all cost the same, I expect most people will go for the 1080p video, but there's also a 720p version and a 400p "phone resolution" option as well. (Actually it's 405p, but apparently 400p sounded better!) You can sign up for a pre-order at bronyfilm.com. Oh, and before I go: nice to see that we British fans aren't forgotten: BUCK 2012 features briefly in the trailer!

2 comments:

As far as the price for the documentary goes, that really isn't bad at all, especially for 90 minutes worth of MLP documentary. I've no doubt that they could have filled several hours more, but 90 minutes seems about right. And they might even do a follow-up at some point if they had enough extra goodies.

As for the trailer, it definitely looks very promising even from just those few minutes. I'd certainly be glad of the chance to see the full version, and I think it could be fascinating. The insights into the different reasons for *why* people have taken to the show so much, as well as seeing so many of the fans, and some insights into the creative side... I think it's guaranteed to be well worth seeing. :)